Long Beach: A 13-year-old girl kidnapped in Texas and sexually assaulted was rescued in Southern California when passersby saw her hold up a “help me” sign in a parked car, police and federal authorities said.
The rescue occurred July 9 in Long Beach, south of Los Angeles, when officers responded to a trouble call and found the “visibly emotional and distressed girl,” police said in a press release.
The “Help Me” sign the girl used to alert passersby.Credit: AP
“Through their investigation, officers learned the Good Samaritans were in a parking lot when they saw the victim in a parked vehicle holding up a piece of paper with ‘help me’ written on it. They acknowledged the note and immediately called [the police],” the release said.
Steven Robert Sablan, 61, of Cleburne, Texas, was arrested and was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of kidnapping and transportation of a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, according to the US attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Sablan was being held at the federal Metropolitan Detention Centre in downtown LA. It was not immediately known if he had an attorney.
The girl was walking down a street in San Antonio, Texas, on July 6 when Sablan drove up, raised a black handgun and told her, “If you don’t get in the car with me, I am going to hurt you,” an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint.
According to the account, the girl had left home without telling her parents because she was attempting to visit a school friend who had moved to Australia a year earlier but kept in touch through an internet chatroom.
At some point after getting in Sablan’s car, the girl told him about her friend and Sablan said he could take her to a cruise ship to go to Australia, but that she would have to do something for him, the affidavit said.
The suspect stopped the car and sexually assaulted the girl, who told him to stop but was scared that she would be hurt if she did not comply, the agent wrote.
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